Sunday, January 31, 2016

No, this is not some populist rant. Billionaire owners are paying millionaire players. There's lots of money in the professional league.

In 2016 many players will be paid at least $20 million dollars. That's $20,000,000. Pretty much all of them have received or will receive that in multiple other seasons. I think the last entity to own a team and lose money was CBS, which owned the Yankees from 1964 to 1973 when a group that included George Steinbrenner bought the team.

I'm all for the players getting as much as they can. The players risk their personal well being for our amusement and no matter how much we pretend to be concerned about the players, we really don't give a damn.

The players are the game, not the owners and sure as heck not the fans. The problem is that the owners have so much money that the players feel foolish if they don't get a big chunk of that.

$20,000,000 is way more money than anyone needs in a lifetime. I have no idea what they do with that or even half of it after taxes, etc. Then what do they do with it the next year and the next? The wealth of the owners must be on an even higher level.

Both groups can do quite well with a lot less money. We fans can and should make that happen. It would provide a better balance among the three groups: owners, players, fans.

Davis set the Baltimore Orioles record for most home runs in a season with 53 in 2013. In 2015 Davis hit 47 homers.

Heyward is noted for his fielding and base running.

Fangraphs types love Heyward types and hate Davis types. Just yesterday on the MLB Network a couple of them were piling on, with Davis being compared to Ryan Howard (Phillies HR record: 58) and Mo Vaughn (1995 AL MVP) by Dave Cameron. Another Fangrapher said that Davis could hurt his knee and lose his power. Apparently Heyward cannot hurt his knee or, if he did, he'd still be worth $24,000,000 fielding his position. I guess losing power for Heyward is not a big deal since he hit only 13 home runs in 2015. Thirteen.

Davis had a big off year in 2014, which seems to really concern the fangraphers. Let's look at the last three years. Since they like Wins Above Replacement (WAR), let's start with that.From 2013 to 2015, (WAR>=13.4 and At least 1500 plate appearances), sorted by greatest WAR Position Players